I see, coming at me from the far end of the tunnel, a bat-like creature. It has in the center of its being a single large eye, unblinking and demonic. Its tail is barbed and likely poisonous.

I draw my rapier and brace myself to lunge as it approaches quickly.

Minor Injury: Largely superficial; painful and distracting, but not life threatening.

A glancing blow! The flight of the demon is unsteady and erratic. I was lucky to land a blow at all.

Imprison

The demon whirls itself around to glare at me with its horrid eye. I am appalled, and yet, in time, what seems like hours... I... am... transfixed.

Move towards goal

I scream within my mind, imploring my legs to move...

No

Yet I am firmly rooted. My body, locked in place by the demon's gaze, obeys no command.

Vengeance

The demon, maintaining eye contact, pulls back its barbed tail and thrusts it forward at my chest.

Yes

Severe Injury: Incapacitating and may become Critical if untreated.

Unable to move, and yet quite aware of the searing pain that comes with a gaping hole in ones chest, I cry out...only in the recesses of my mind. The cave remains horrifyingly silent following the punching of demonflesh through steel and leather and bone. My eyes blur with tears only to darken moments later. I am fading from the light.

----------------

"Has anyone seen Fosco?" Deryn calls to the tavern patrons.

Carry

Boots

Joane the Alchemist, with her orblike eyes looks up from her oversized ale, "I saw him, yes, Fosco, not but two hours ago. He was carrying strange boots on his pack, covered in metal braces and spiked on the toes and sides.

Deryn immediately recognizes the boots being described as the climbing boots that Fosco had been eyeing ever since they had spotted what might or might well not have been a small cave opening halfway up a cliff face on their way back from Sawic. She had dismissed the idea of scaling the shear rock face, and thus ought to have expected Fosco would sneak off to explore it without her as soon as he could, or at least as soon as he got the boots required to get there.

At first, Deryn was relieved not to simply find the mangled and broken corpse of her friend lying at the foot of the rock wall. Quickly she set her mind to the daunting prospect of scaling the cliff; she tried not to think what might then await her in the cave itself.

Eventually, Deryn's hand clutches the rough floor of the cave opening and she pulls herself, exhausted and baked by the early afternoon sun, into the hole set in the side of the mountain.

PC negative

After several deep breaths, dusting herself off and cursing Fosco's sense of adventure, Deryn steps deeper into the tunnel, uncertain of her friend's fate and with dark thoughts beginning to haunt her expectations.

Lighting the lantern hung from the end of her lute as the once dominating sunlight gleamed its last rays behind her, Deryn begins plucking out a calming tune; it was once the lullaby her mother had sung to her as a girl.

----------------

The light is gone from me. I am cold. Alone. A pinhole of dim light shines in the center of my mind. Like the lone ember of a desperate man's attempt to start a fire in a rainstorm I cling to the tiny ray of hope, hanging all fate upon its continued existence and coaxing it to grow brighter.

I feel my body once more (I had begun to doubt my ever having been corporeal at all). I feel the biting cold at my toes and in the ends of my fingers. I feel the pooling blood in my lungs, and the tightness of my throat. I feel the weight of my armor pulling down on me with immense pressure. I pull my focus away from the weight and focus on the light; the pinhole widens and I am soon bathed in a warm glow. I feel suddenly weightless, rising towards the source of the light. I hear the echos of a distant angel. She is singing to me.

Attract

The angel draws near to me. The light is within her, and she is the light. She pulls me close. I look up to her face, her long, bright hair hangs over me. Her eyes are kind...blue...familiar.

"Deryn!"

"Fosco!"

When Deryn finally releases me I clutch at my chest. The armor confirms what I had hoped a nightmare. A fist-sized hole is ripped through the steel and my clothes are stained profusely with long dried blood. The center of my chest is hairless beneath the hole but without a sign of scarring. I pull the breastplate off look through the jagged hole. On the ground at my feet lie the two halves of what was once the demon, its eye cleaved down the middle.